Civil society and social capital are two related concepts. Civil society refers to groups of people who contribute to change in the community through activities that are not part of the formal political system, commerce, or government (Baum and Ziersch, 2003). It comprises those organizations that complement (and contextualize) states and markets, while at a lower unit of analysis social capital refers to the norms and networks that enable people to act collectively (Woolcock and Narayan, 2000). Civil society may be the more comprehensive concept, but its operationalization in research and policy debates has often been made manifest through the concept of social capital (Woolcock, 2011). Putnam articulates an understanding of participation (in civil society) in terms of the social capital which is produced as a result of different forms of civic activity (Portes, 1998).
To understand how social capital is defined, I will dive deeper into Bourdieu’s work. One of Bourdieu’s main contributions to social science has been introducing the three concepts of habitus, field, and capital (Bourdieu, 1977; 1986; 1990). A habitus is a structuring mechanism that generates strategies for actors in the social world and through which actors relate to the social world. It is a system of durable dispositions, an internalized mental or cognitive structure that functions both consciously and unconsciously, and is constraining in its suggestion of what people should and should not do (Ihlen, 2007). At the basis of a habitus are all of the situations through which dispositions are created and that an individual experiences throughout his or her life (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992).
Bourdieu (1977) viewed society as a social space made up of a network of conceptual fields (Browne-Yung et al., 2013). A field has a dialectical relationship with habitus and is understood as a social space or network of relationships between positions occupied by actors (Ihlen, 2007). Actors use various forms of capital to pursue their interests knowingly or unknowingly and to position themselves within this field. Looking at sport clubs the club itself can be seen as the habitus, the field is the social space of members and non-members (like parents, sponsors, visitors) in the club and the actors are the individual members (or non-members) themselves.
In his article on forms of capital, Bourdieu (1986) defines three fundamental types of capital: economic capital (money, property), cultural capital (knowledge, skills, educational qualifications), and social capital (connections, membership of a group). He also argued that all of these forms of capital might also be apprehended as symbolic capital (prestige, honor, reputation). All these forms of capital are important to a sport club, but in this essay I will focus on social capital.
Note: this blog was written for the course ‘Sport, Culture and Society‘ which I attended at the University of Amsterdam in autumn 2015. Download the complete research essay ‘Social capital in sport clubs‘.
Sport en Maatschappij 